Disciplinary Literacy Instruction Case Study

Superior Essays
1.) Explain what is meant by disciplinary literacy instruction? How is this accomplished? Why is it important? Cite sources (Subban article; Shanahan article). Disciplinary literacy instruction is literacy instruction that takes place within the different content areas (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Subjects such as math, history, and science require approaches to literacy that are unique to the content area that might not make sense otherwise. Just as one would approach reading poetry differently than reading a biography, each content area requires the use of reading tactics specific to the type of reading that is taking place. Teachers accomplish disciplinary literacy instruction by employing strategies that make the content accessible and comprehensible to students. Levey & Murnane (as cited in …show more content…
(2015) write about four areas which are crucial to helping English Learners (ELs) avoid becoming lifelong English learners: access, climate, expectations, and language instruction. This article contained so much valuable information, but it really made me think about how deliberate educators need to be when teaching our students. It is easy to get caught up in just making sure that our students can “get through” the task at hand. Instruction, specifically for our ELs, needs to be intentional and thoughtfully implemented to help them to become English speakers. Teachers should utilize multimedia during instruction to help ELs access content (Echevarria et al., 2015). Student engagement can be increased by creating a climate that is positive and productive. Teachers can do this simply by showing interest in the EL’s culture and unique perspective (Echevarria et al., 2015). Expectations can be made clear by the teacher before a lesson so that the EL has a clear idea of what they will learn (Echevarria et al., 2015). Finally, teachers should provide explicit language instruction to cultivate acquisition of vocabulary (Echevarria et al.,

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